This is a short transcript excerpt of a TJ Walker livestream where he explains how to get reporters to correct mistakes in news stories. He defines two mistake types (clear factual errors and context-lacking but technically true statements) and recommends fast, brief, specific corrections: email the reporter (ask for their email during interviews), post a concise comment under the online story, and as a last resort contact the editor.
Chapters
How do you get reporters to correct mistakes that have gone in the story? There are several ways of doing this. Let's start off by defining what we mean by mistakes. Did they factually get a blunder that is just black and white no one would disagree with is false? They said you owned 10 buildings and you own a thousand buildings. Then of course that's clear cut factual mistake. There's also a situation where a reporter position something in a horribly negative light that was factually true, but that you believe any fair minded person if they knew another fact would have a completely different interpretation or perspective on it. And you feel like it's really a disservice to the readers, viewers, listeners to not have that piece of information. There are two types of things you might want to correct. For starters, you can simply email the reporter. And that's a perfect example of why when you are talking to a reporter over the phone, if the reporter has called you ask for their email. Because if they interview you by phone at 4 from their office phone and the story goes online at 8pm and you see it at home at 8:30, you might not want to leave a message on their office phone that they don't get for the next day. You want to email them right away. So that's one approach. Email them. And the key is be as brief as possible and as highly specific as possible. You don't want to start off with oh you knucklehead, your whole story is awful, you screwed up everything. You have a but no, that's just going to be deleted. Tell them exactly what the facts are and the way I do it, and that often works well is say, hey Jim, fascinating, intriguing article you wrote. Great job. You mentioned specifically that I own a thousand buildings in the metropolitan area. I actually own 100 buildings. I think your readers would like to know something like that. Very specific. It's then easy for the reporter to make the change. The reporter doesn't lose face. You're not going to the editor and publisher and demanding that someone be fired if you can't get a hold of the reporter and you think it's important. Most stories these days have an online comment section. So there's nothing preventing you from going online and doing a comment right below the story and put your perspective there. Again, keep it short. Don't whine, don't attack the reporter. Simply state the facts as you see them. If you have evidence, give evidence. Be as brief as possible. Don't get into an ad hominem attack against the reporter and people who are reading the comments will see it. And if the comments are moderated, in my experience, the media outlet will still let your comments on even if you're saying the reporter botched some facts. If you're not being mean, vicious, nasty, sexist, racist, most media outlets will let your comments on. This is far better than printing up a paper version of a letter to the editor and sending it in. I don't even know what happens to those anymore. But that's not where I would try to correct the record if all else fails. If you can't do that, you can always write to the editor and say, look, I told the reporter this didn't get in the story. I tried placing a comment. It's not there. This is factually wrong. You're doing a disservice to your readers. Here are the facts. Please change the story. That's a last resort to me. The guiding principle now is speed, quickness. Reporters really don't want to have misinformation in their story. So if you've done an interview, monitor it. Try to monitor when it goes live so if you see an inaccuracy, you can email the reporter right away. That way they can make changes quickly. They save face, and so do you.
